The History of Humanity and the World Views of Civilized Nations
GA 353
One can also call these lectures dialogues, because their content was always determined by the workers themselves, at Rudolf Steiner's request. They were allowed to choose their topics themselves; he encouraged them to ask questions and share their thoughts, and he encouraged them to express themselves and to voice their objections. Both the far-reaching and the obvious were touched upon. Particular interest was shown in the therapeutic and hygienic aspects of life; this showed how much these things are part of the daily concerns of the worker. But all phenomena of nature, of the mineral, plant and animal world were touched upon, and this led out into the cosmos again, to the origin of things and beings. Finally, the workers requested an introduction to spiritual science and the basic knowledge for understanding the mysteries of Christianity.
This spiritual work together had developed out of a few courses that Dr. Roman Boos had initially given for those interested in such questions after finishing work on the construction site; they were later continued by other members of the Anthroposophical Society. But now the workers asked Rudolf Steiner if he would take charge of them and quench their thirst for knowledge. They also asked if it would be possible to use one hour of the usual working hours for this purpose, when they were still fresh and receptive. This was done in the morning hour after the vesper break. Some employees of the construction office were also allowed to attend, along with two or three of Dr. Steiner's closest colleagues. Practical matters were also discussed, such as beekeeping, which interested beekeepers. The transcript of those lectures on bees was later published by the Agricultural Experimental Ring at the Goetheanum as a brochure for its members, when Dr. Steiner was no longer with us.
Now, more and more people wanted to get to know these lectures. However, they were intended for a special audience and were spoken off the cuff in a special situation, as suggested by the circumstances and the mood of the listening workers — and certainly not with a view to publication and printing. But it is precisely the way they were spoken that has a fresh and immediate quality that one would not want to be missed. One would rob them of the special atmosphere that is based on the interaction of what lived in the souls of the questioners and the answerer. One would not want to wipe away the color and atmosphere by pedantically rearranging the sentence structure. Therefore, the attempt is made to touch them as little as possible. Even if not everything in them corresponds to the conventions of literary style, they have the immediacy of life.
This collection consists of automated translations of all seventeen lectures except for 4, 8 and 11.
| I. | The Effect of the Cemetery Atmosphere on People | March 1, 1924 |
| The life views of the ancient Indians, Egyptians, Babylonians and Jews. Linden and walnut trees as balancers of the harmful effects of the cemetery. If a person lives in the forest, his constructive powers are stronger; if he lives near a cemetery, his destructive powers are stronger. The tendency to think precisely. The harm of the cemetery is the corpses. Farmhouse cleverness grows through the cemetery atmosphere. The atmosphere of the grapevine also has a balancing effect. The scent of lime blossoms and the scent of the walnut tree have more of an invigorating effect on the astral body, the atmosphere of the grapevine has more of an invigorating effect on the ego. Cemeteries outside the city. The water of an environment has a particularly strong effect on the etheric body. The balancing effect of carbonic acid water compared to the contaminated water from the cemetery. Funerary ceremonies. Gandhi. Baghdad Railway. Indian caste system. Egyptian priesthood. The secret of ancient Indian wisdom. The Indians regarded the physical body spiritually. The Egyptians' mastery of nature. Osiris, Typhon and Isis. The Egyptians discovered the etheric body and took it as spirit. The Egyptian mummies. Babylonian astronomy. The Babylonians discovered the astral body spiritually. The Jews wanted only one invisible God. The Jews came up with the concept of the spirit of the ego and called it Yahweh. | ||
| II. | Supra-physical Connections in the Human Mind | March 5, 1924 |
| The original meaning of the carnival festival and what has become of it. Supernatural connections in fermenting wine, in radio telegraphy and in twin siblings. Animals as prophets of natural disasters. The dying person's premonitions. Influences from one person to another. The ancient Greeks' view of nature. The ancient peoples' view of man. The Mystery of Golgotha and its Greco-Roman environment. Man is a being that comes from the spiritual world and when he dies, he returns to the spiritual world. Jesus and Christ. In the mystery centers, the cult was completely connected with the teachings. “Fathers” and “children.” Sons of God and sons of men. What came into the world through Christ Jesus. Secret similarities of languages. | ||
| III. | The Entry of Christianity into the Ancient World and the Mysteries | March 8, 1924 |
| Greek culture in southern Italy. Romulus and the Roman robber state. Etruscans. Tacitus on the Christ Jesus. Originally a free movement in Christianity. Catacomb Christianity. Fusion of Christianity with the external state and world domination. The mysteries and the seven stages of initiation: raven, occultist, defender, sphinx, soul of the people, sun man and father. What is most important about Christ Jesus is that He is the solar truth and teaches the solar word. What happened at the death of Christ was a repetition of what has always happened in the cultus through the mysteries, before all the world. About the concept of the solar man and the concept of the Father. | ||
| IV. | What did Europe Look Like at the Time of the Spread of Christianity? | March 15, 1924 |
| The old Celtic population of Europe and the advancing, westward migrating Asian peoples. Tacitus and his writing “Germania”. The ancient Greeks saw nature, the Nordic peoples saw the spirits of nature; the Greeks built temples for the gods, the people of the north worshiped their gods on mountains and in forests. The spread of an externalized Christianity across Europe. Wulfila's translation of the Bible. The three main occupations of the Germanic peoples. The ways in which Christianity was brought to Europe and in what form it was spread among the Germanic peoples. The emergence of the Romance and Germanic languages. | V. | The Trinity - The three forms of Christianity and Islam — The Crusades | March 19, 1924 |
| In Eastern Christianity, the first form of Christianity, the cult is much more important than the doctrine; Roman Christianity, the second form of Christianity, has also retained the cult, but places much more emphasis on the doctrine. Islam and its principle: There is only one God. The Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Father-God is everywhere in nature; the Son-God is everywhere present where human beings develop free will; and the third form is the Spirit-God, which sanctifies and spiritualizes the will again. These three divine forms are one and work in man as a unity. Fatalism in Mohammedanism. Charlemagne. Harun al Raschid. The spiritual element, which has preserved the ancient science, came to Europe with Mohammedanism. Struggles between Christianity and Mohammedanism. In Eastern Christianity, the Father-God has become more important. The great church schism. The Arabs and their pronounced nature religion. The special way in which the Turks look at God has been passed on to Mohammedanism. The Crusades express the struggle between Christianity and the Turkified Mohammedanism. The ancient Oriental science was brought back from the Crusades. The third form of Christianity, Protestant Christianity, is based on the impulse to get to know Christianity through the inner life. Luther and Hus. Getting to know the Gospel. Real Christianity was no longer understood in any of the three forms of Christianity. | VI. | Concepts of Christ in Ancient and Modern Times | March 26, 1924 |
| Christ as the Good Shepherd. The Crucified. Christ as an extraterrestrial being and the dogma of the so-called immaculate conception. The trichotomy as a heretical concept in the Middle Ages. The Lamb of God. The monstrance. The crescent of the Turks. The Lord's Supper controversy. The Thirty Years' War. In the emergence of Protestantism, the spiritual principle was the effective one. Otfried's “Gospel Harmony” and the “Heliand”. Christianity before Christ. Materialism in ecclesiastical views. | ||
| VII. | About Scarring — The Mummy | April 26, 1924 |
| Wound healing and scarring. Whether a scar develops and remains depends on the strength or weakness of the etheric body. Those who always work outside in the fresh air have a strong etheric body. Blood poisoning due to weakness of the etheric body. Smell of gall-nut ink. Typewriting. About the poisoned air in the mummy tombs. About the time between two incarnations. Destructive forces that destroy the conditions in which we used to live. Why the Egyptians embalmed the corpses. An enormous destructive force lives in a mummy. The magical power of language. Discussing the spices used for embalming and for preparing the mummies. Incense atmosphere. Germination capacity of grain seeds from the Egyptian royal tombs. The hostile effect of mummies. Why it is so extremely difficult to get to the pharaohs' tombs. The power of the ancient pharaohs. | VIII. | On the Foundation of a Spiritual-Scientific Astronomy | May 5, 1924 |
| Rousseau's story with the toads. Helmont's experience with the wolfsbane. Influence of the moon on the growth of plant roots. Effect of beetroot on intestinal parasites. Root diet. Influence of the moon's forces on reproduction and growth. Dependence of the inner animal forces on the sun. Thinking and all inner life depends on Saturn. The moon is related to the plant in man, the sun to the animal in man and Saturn to the complete humanity in man. Knowledge of the effects of the stars among the Babylonians and Assyrians. All minerals were once plants. Metals and planets. Eradication of the old science between the 5th and 11th, 12th century. Commodus as an “adept”. The parchment scrolls of Constantinople and what has become of them. Copernicus as the founder of modern astronomy. The three Copernican principles, Svedberg and alchemy. How can Paracelsus be understood? The misery of today's knowledge. Star science must be combined with human science. | IX. | About the Sephirot Tree | May 10, 1924 |
| What the ancient Jews actually meant by the Sephirot tree. The forces of the world affect man from all sides. Ten forces - Sephirot - affect man from the outside. Three forces form the human head: Kether (the crown), Chokmah (wisdom) and Binah (intelligence); three other forces affect the middle man: Chesed (freedom), Geburah (strength) and Tiphereth (beauty); three further forces affect the lower man: Netsah (overcoming), Hod (compassion) and Jesod (the foundation on which man stands), and as the tenth force, the earthly outside world has an effect on him: Malkuth (the field). With the ten Sephirot, the Jews grasped the spiritual world; the Sephirot are a spiritual alphabet. Raimundus Lullus and extrasensory cognition. Spiritistic sessions. About the alphabet. | X. | On Kant, Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann | May 14, 1924 |
| Early study of Kant. How Kant viewed the world. Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason.” The Kantian “thing in itself.” Kant asserts from thinking: no one knows anything about the thing in itself, but the whole world is made only from the impression we receive from things. Schopenhauer in the succession of Kant. Consequences of Kant's teaching. Kant's transcendental deduction of space and time and his proof that man has a transcendental apperception. Kant's curious sentence: “I had to stop knowledge in order to make room for faith.” Kant's “Critique of Practical Reason” and his doctrine of faith in God, freedom and immortality. Kant as a disease of science. | XI. | About Comets and the Solar System, the Zodiac and the Rest of the Fixed Starry Sky | May 17, 1924 |
| Planetary and fixed stars. Shooting stars and comets. Ptolemaic and Copernican world systems. No absolute decision can be made about world systems. The irregular motion or rest of the entire planetary system comes from the comets. The birth and death of comets. The entire planetary system, including the sun, races towards the constellation of Hercules (apex motion). The comets replace the unusable, discarded substance of the planetary system. The earth draws its substance from the universe. Disintegration of comets. Good and bad vintages. The path of the sun and the moon passes through twelve constellations. Influence of the zodiacal constellations on human beings and their coverage by the moon. The sun: a hollow body. The sun is the lightest body in space, the moon the most material body. Influence of the sun and moon on human beings. | XII. | Decadent Atlantic Culture in Tibet – The Dalai Lama How can Europe spread its spiritual culture in Asia? – Englishmen and Germans as colonizers | May 20, 1924 |
| Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. In Tibetan culture, the old Atlantean culture lives on in a decadent form. The oldest form of architecture. The principle of rule and the power of the priesthood in Tibet. The Dalai Lama. About being Chinese. The Europeans have not yet done anything right to spread right spiritual life in Asia. Alexander the Great as a spreader of Greek culture in Asia. The English and Germans as colonizers. The basic condition for the spread of a spiritual culture: respect for the culture of others. Rudolf Steiner's response to Nietzsche and Haeckel. How Buddhism was spread. Sense of reality and real spiritual culture. The Asian wants images. Spengler's “Decline of the West.” The Europeans must first achieve a spiritual culture themselves. | XIII. | The Nature of the Sun – Origins of the Freemasonry: The Sign, grip and word — Ku Klux Klan | June 4, 1924 |
| How the sun's rays are created. Today's Freemasonry is only a shadow of what it once was. In the old mysteries, the school, the art institute and the religion were one. Grip, sign and word. Sanskrit. From the original language. Something in the language allows the whole person to be recognized. What Freemasonry has adopted as a cult. The Catholic Church and Freemasonry as great opponents. The aims of the Freemasons. The extremely nationalist secret society of the Ku Klux Klan. | XIV. | Man and the Hierarchies – The Loss of Ancient Knowledge – On the “Philosophy of Freedom” | June 25, 1924 |
| The human being carries all the kingdoms of nature within himself. He reaches into the spiritual realms that stand above him: with thinking into the third hierarchy, with feeling into the second hierarchy, and with will into the first hierarchy. The downfall of ancient knowledge comes from the fact that humanity is developing towards freedom. Through materialism, humanity has bought freedom. Questions about the second chapter of “Philosophy of Freedom.” Kant's biggest mistake. | ||